Mame Tutorial for n00bs

[jayjay]

@MerlinArcade Did you find a fix? I have the same issue. Everything works fine in MAME but always NOT FOUND through LB. 

[MerlinArcade]

6 minutes ago, jayjay said:

@MerlinArcade Did you find a fix? I have the same issue. Everything works fine in MAME but always NOT FOUND through LB.

Yeah, the bug seems to come from LB in the top right drop menu. If you change the selection (ex: from Boxes to Clear Logos) that platform may also change in BB.

 

So change the selection open BB and see how it changes.

 

 

[jayjay]

8 minutes ago, MerlinArcade said:

Snip

That didnt work... Every game in Launchbox errors but now in bigbox "88 games" starts no matter what game I choose. It even starts up if I select "arcade" or even "playstation" at the first wheel. lol ffs. I'll delete and start again and I'll try a different setup. Thanks anyway.

[Lordmonkus]

Personally I use the split roms set, this allows for more flexibility to pick exactly which version of a game gets loaded. The differences are listed at the end of the guide on the first page.

As far as CHDs go, I do not use them but they are needed for certain games. CHDs are hard drive images that some arcade cabinets had in them for video and audio files that were too large to fit onto a chip.

[AGEE1981]

On 9/30/2016 at 8:27 AM, martinconroy said:

Thanks @lordmonkus, really good. Personally this takes things to where I have got to now.

The thing that threw me for a while was getting it to appear on the correct monitor in multi-monitor configs. Might help those in a similar situation to know there's a section you should edit so it looks similar to this:
 

#

# OSD PER-WINDOW VIDEO OPTIONS

#



screen                     \\.\DISPLAY3

aspect                    auto

resolution                auto

view                      auto

screen0                    \\.\DISPLAY3

aspect0                   auto

resolution0               auto

view0                     auto

screen1                    \\.\DISPLAY3

aspect1                   auto

resolution1               auto

view1                     auto

screen2                    \\.\DISPLAY3

aspect2                   auto

resolution2               auto

view2                     auto

screen3                    \\.\DISPLAY3

aspect3                   auto

resolution3               auto

view3                     auto

Note - I have a 3 monitor system. The confusion is that I wanted it on my main monitor. This is "monitor 1" according to Windows. However, MAME doesn't seem to respect that order so it's worth changing the number of the DISPLAY in the above until it appears on the correct screen for you.

Thanks so much for this, this had been driving me nuts for past couple of hours trying to figure it out, legend thank you

Edited April 14, 2017 by AGEE1981
typo

[Daskepeder]

Ok so I got the 0.184 sets. I grabbed them all, but been using the non-merged set to keep it as fuzz free as possible. As stated earlier in this thread it resulted in almost 2800 games imported with all the filters on. Since the folder with all the zip files contains over 34 000 I thought this number seemed a bit low, but ok. I can't say I miss anything so I'll leave it there.

I then went to import the CHD set too. I was expecting those to further expand the library a bit, but it only imported 5 games (I think it was 5, been a few weeks since I did this already). Is this all correct? Whats the point with the CHD based set if doesnt have anything new? I was thinking of doing it the other way around, since my limited understanding of this says that CHD-based games should be "better" since it uses a "harddrive".

Could someone a little more experienced comment on this? Have I missed something? It's not that I don't there is enough games, I just wanna do it as right as possible.

[AGEE1981]

3 hours ago, Daskepeder said:

Ok so I got the 0.184 sets. I grabbed them all, but been using the non-merged set to keep it as fuzz free as possible. As stated earlier in this thread it resulted in almost 2800 games imported with all the filters on. Since the folder with all the zip files contains over 34 000 I thought this number seemed a bit low, but ok. I can't say I miss anything so I'll leave it there.

I then went to import the CHD set too. I was expecting those to further expand the library a bit, but it only imported 5 games (I think it was 5, been a few weeks since I did this already). Is this all correct? Whats the point with the CHD based set if doesnt have anything new? I was thinking of doing it the other way around, since my limited understanding of this says that CHD-based games should be "better" since it uses a "harddrive".

Could someone a little more experienced comment on this? Have I missed something? It's not that I don't there is enough games, I just wanna do it as right as possible.

THE CHD files are the hard-drive files themselves (so game data, not the game itself). Typically when importing a mame set, there are many versions of many of the games so the actual amount of individual games typically seems a lot lower than the number of files in a mame set. A lot of the mame games are unplayable without the corresponding CHD files. Hope this helps.

Edited April 19, 2017 by AGEE1981

[Daskepeder]

9 hours ago, AGEE1981 said:

THE CHD files are the hard-drive files themselves (so game data, not the game itself). Typically when importing a mame set, there are many versions of many of the games so the actual amount of individual games typically seems a lot lower than the number of files in a mame set. A lot of the mame games are unplayable without the corresponding CHD files. Hope this helps.

Thanks you for your reply.

The numbers are one thing, but should I delete everything and import the CHD files first in order to get the best experience from a game with many versions? Are the CHD versions generally better than the other ones?

[DOS76]

There are only a few CHD games that don't have corresponding .zip files that go with them so most games if in a working state and use CHD will already be added you will find that a large majority of the games that use CHD files don't even work in MAME yet. I have all the CHD files but I've never tried to import them in to LB myself as there is very little reason to you would probably be better off finding out the few CHD games that don't have ROMs to match them and only importing those if you even want to bother doing so.

[Daskepeder]

5 hours ago, DOS76 said:

There are only a few CHD games that don't have corresponding .zip files that go with them so most games if in a working state and use CHD will already be added you will find that a large majority of the games that use CHD files don't even work in MAME yet. I have all the CHD files but I've never tried to import them in to LB myself as there is very little reason to you would probably be better off finding out the few CHD games that don't have ROMs to match them and only importing those if you even want to bother doing so.

I see. I wount bother with it then. They just take up space anyways. Thanks!

[neil9000]

19 minutes ago, Daskepeder said:

I see. I wount bother with it then. They just take up space anyways. Thanks!

Basically, you have done quite well to never get a mame issue, saying you are missing a .CHD you are clearly playing games that don't need it. some games do though, and mame will through a strop and say what its missing, mostly a .chd file.

[DOS76]

Yeah I'm not saying don't bother with obtaining the CHD's just wouldn't bother adding them to LB although you could just get them individually as you run into errors telling you you need them and then you will save a ton of space by having only the ones you know you need to play specific games that you want to play

[Daskepeder]

1 hour ago, DOS76 said:

Yeah I'm not saying don't bother with obtaining the CHD's just wouldn't bother adding them to LB although you could just get them individually as you run into errors telling you you need them and then you will save a ton of space by having only the ones you know you need to play specific games that you want to play

Not 100% sure if we're on the same page here. My English is probably not good enough as I feel I always end up like this when I'm using forums!  I'll try again.

I have imported the regular 0.184 non-merged set into Launchbox. It resulted in about 2800 games from the the around 38 000 zip files in the directory. I excluded all things that could be excluded of mohjang games and so on. I then went through this collection and tried to scrape and rename the duplicates which wasn't really the same game. I also tested a few of my favorites.

After I had done this, I imported the chd set with zip files in them. As this set is very large, my understanding is that the chd games are disk based and hence I expect it to be newer games or if they are duplicates of the "normal" set, enhanced versions of them. I haven't really tried to start them with MAME before I imported. Even if the import list showed quite a lot of games, only a very few games actually got imported into Launchbox (I think it was 5 games). I reckon the reason for this is that the rest are duplicates since they all are marked with Arcade games.

So I guess my question really is, what do you guys get from importing the chd set?

Edited April 20, 2017 by Daskepeder

[DOS76]

I don't never I've never done so the CHD's are just disc files that work with the rom so if a needs both you need to have both or it won't work CHD files shouldn't be in zipped format they should be in folders with chd files inside of those so now you are confusing me

Edited April 20, 2017 by DOS76

[Daskepeder]

3 hours ago, DOS76 said:

I don't never I've never done so the CHD's are just disc files that work with the rom so if a needs both you need to have both or it won't work CHD files shouldn't be in zipped format they should be in folders with chd files inside of those so now you are confusing me

Sorry, my bad! No zips. Just folders with CHD files in them. My understanding have been that the CHD files were games in themselves, but you're saying that it's actually an extension that some games need to run. I don't quite get why they aren't in the MAME 0.184 ROMs (non-merged) to begin with then. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up. I'm just gonna make the directory with all the CHDs available in MAME then. As you understand this is my first time meddling with Arcade games so I'm very much a n00b.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Daskepeder

[AGEE1981]

49 minutes ago, Daskepeder said:

Sorry, my bad! No zips. Just folders with CHD files in them. My understanding have been that the CHD files were games in themselves, but you're saying that it's actually an extension that some games need to run. I don't quite get why they aren't in the MAME 0.184 ROMs (non-merged) to begin with then. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up. I'm just gonna make the directory with all the CHDs available in MAME then. As you understand this is my first time meddling with Arcade games so I'm very much a n00b.

The reason the CHD's are not included is because of there file size, I mean that is over 350GB of data, not everyone wants to download that much  It is for this reason that I decided against downloading the CHD's and will just accept that some games will not work.

Edited April 20, 2017 by AGEE1981

[tallpr24]

Hey guys,

new to mame here.

I'm using mame0.816ui. My Xbox 360 controller wireless keeps losing the config in Mame.  I thought it was happening when I launched mame without my controller turned on but tried it again today and lost the config again even though the controller was on.  I changed the config file to be read only, not sure what else to do.  any suggestions.  I have mame and roms in the root of c drive.

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, tallpr24 said:

Hey guys,

new to mame here.

I'm using mame0.816ui. My Xbox 360 controller wireless keeps losing the config in Mame.  I thought it was happening when I launched mame without my controller turned on but tried it again today and lost the config again even though the controller was on.  I changed the config file to be read only, not sure what else to do.  any suggestions.  I have mame and roms in the root of c drive.

Hi, launch a mame game then hit the tab key and set your controller there. You can set it as a general which i recommend or as a setup for that particular game.

[tallpr24]

i did, the issue is (apperently its a common issue) is that if your using a wireless controller or usb controller, sometimes when you re launch mame , all the mapping get reset and you have to re do all the button again.

[Lordmonkus]

I have never experienced this issue with either wired or wireless controllers. Not saying it can't / doesn't happen to people but I have never experienced it with quite a few different versions of Mame.